Derren Brown

Broken Glass Stunt

revealed

In his incredible live show Something Wicked This Way Comes, Derren Brown performed a seemingly impossible feat. He cut off the oxygen to his brain (causing his heart to stop beating) and then walked barefoot right across a pile of broken glass. As if that wasn’t enough, he then lay on it and had a volunteer stand on him. The audience was shocked, but Derren seemed to be just fine. You can see the entire broken glass stunt here.

Explanation:

We already explained how you can stop your pulse, so we won’t be talking about this here. Even if the whole thing about stopping the pulse was just a clever trick, walking on broken glass sure as hell wasn’t! That was real glass and Derren really did walk on it. How does he do it? Instead of using fake glass or some other gimmick, Derren simply takes advantage of common misconceptions and plays tricks on our imagination. Just imagine walking on broken glass for a moment. A pretty frightening idea, isn’t it? You can imagine how incredibly painful and dangerous it must be.

But do you have any real experience with walking on broken glass? Or do you just assume it must hurt because it looks really painful? As it turns out, walking on broken glass is a pretty safe and painless thing to do when done right! While most people are certain that it must be highly unpleasant, it’s really not that much of a deal.

Of course we’re not saying that it’s completely safe and we certainly don’t think you should try it yourself. Broken glass is indeed quite a dangerous thing and shouldn’t be played with. However, walking on it is much safer than it looks like. That’s also the reason why they often walk on broken glass at various motivational workshops as a sort of exercise which supposedly helps to strengthen the power of will. Believe it or not, that’s what they do.

There are some things which should be taken into account when trying to walk on broken glass. The glass should be broken into small and not too curved pieces to reduce the risk of injury. The pile of glass should be quite thick (about 8 cm) so the pieces can shift and adjust as you gently and carefully place your foot on them. You must move your foot elsewhere if you sense a sharp edge under it.

A few other things about walking on broken glass are revealed in the next video. Remember, don’t try it at home!